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(2000) Witches, scientists, philosophers, Dordrecht, Springer.
It is commonly overlooked that Hume's section on abstract ideas in the Treatise2 actually proposes answers to two quite different, though intimately related, questions.3 Having endorsed Berkeley's nominalism, with its conclusion that generality only arises because particular ideas function representatively, i.e., stand for or represent (denotatively) other particular ideas of the "same sort, " Hume's first task was to explain how particular ideas function "beyond their nature " "as if (they) were universal. " Hume's answer to this question was, of course, psychological. He ascribed to general names the capacity to stimulate in the imagination the disposition to recall the other resembling particulars. And though there are difficulties in the notion of disposition which trouble both theoretical psychologists and philosophers of science, some recent commentators on Hume's theory of general ideas have praised this dispositional theory.4
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-9504-9_6
Full citation:
Solomon, G. (2000)., Husserl's critique of Hume's notion of distinctions of reason, in G. Solomon (ed.), Witches, scientists, philosophers, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 71-78.
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