Shoshana Smith, University of California, Berkeley
"Certainty and Direct Perception in Descartes"

      I will argue that Descartes has an underlying metaphysical picture of clear and distinct perception that explains why clear and distinct perceptions are certain while sense perceptions are not. Specifically, sense perceptions are indirect perceptions of reality, whereas clear and distinct perceptions are direct perceptions of reality.
      Descartes mentions three kinds of clear and distinct perception: eternal truths, truths about the perceiver's state of mind, and propositions following from these. I will argue that not only are truths about our own states of mind directly perceived, but eternal truths are also directly perceived. This is because Descartes thinks of eternal truths as perceptions of essences, and he thinks those essences exist objectively in the mind. Despite existing in human minds, however, essences are also importantly independent of human minds. On my interpretation, essences existing objectively in human minds are the same essences that exist formally in the world and objectively in God's mind. Perceptions of eternal truths are actually direct perceptions of the contents of God's mind. Thus, Descartes's metaphysical basis for thinking that clear and distinct perceptions of eternal truths are certain is that they are direct perceptions of a reality that simultaneously exists in our own minds, in God's mind, and perhaps in the world.
      Once we understand Descartes's underlying metaphysical picture of clear and distinct perception, we see that, unlike sense perceptions, the problem of correspondence does not arise for them. Consequently, skeptical arguments will be unsuccessful in casting doubt on them. Achieving clear and distinct perception will be as simple as understanding what is contained in our own ideas, but at the same time, clear and distinct perception allows us to grasp reality rather than merely subjective points of view.

Roger Florka, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA
"The Psycho-Physiological Bases of Descartes's Distinction between the Sensations of Secondary Qualities and the Sensory Ideas of Primary Qualities"

      Commentary on Descartes's version of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities usually focuses directly on his elaborate epistemological and metaphysical reasons for it. I will argue that he also distinguishes them on the grounds that there are sensations of secondary qualities but not of primary qualities, and I will argue that how he understands what it is to be a sensation turns on his psycho-physiological explanation of the tradition Aristotelian distinction between proper and common sensibles.
      Like Galileo before him and Boyle and Locke after him, Descartes has some version of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities (though not in those terms). Ultimately, he argues that ideas of secondary qualities are obscure and confused, that it is not necessary--or perhaps not possible--to attribute secondary qualities to things in the physical world in order to explain that world, and that our ideas of secondary qualities resemble nothing that is really in the things to which we habitually attribute those properties. But these are all results of philosophical reflection and argumentation, and they depend on Descartes's having made a prior discrimination between primary and secondary qualities. The basis for that prior discrimination is Aristotle's distinction between the proper sensibles and the common sensibles. The proper--or special--sensibles are those properties we can perceive only by means of a single (external) sense. Color and light through the eyes (the visual organ), smells through the nose, heat via the skin regarded as an organ of sense, sounds, and tastes. The common sensibles are perceived via more than one sense. We can only see colors and light, but we can both see and feel shapes.
      Commentators have sometimes dismissed Descartes's reference to the Aristotelian distinction as a mere gesture to tradition, playing no important role in his people. But I observe that the proper and common sensibles line up with the primary and secondary qualities and I argue that the traditional Aristotelian distinction is the organizing principle on which Descartes bases the investigations that lead to his theory of sense perception. It is most noticeable when Descartes is setting up his psycho-physiological explanation of sense perception. Consider especially Treatise on Man and Principles. In each work Descartes's discussion of the external senses and their objects begins by taking up the proper sensibles and only then turns to the common sensibles. In the Treatise he is explicit about applying this organization principle (AT X.159; The World and Other Writings, ed. Stephen Gaukroger, 131). But is this just a matter of using convenient traditional categories? I argue that a close examination of the physical background story, the physiological events leading up to the mental phenomena of sense perception, reveals a difference between the production of sensations of secondary qualities and sensory ideas of primary qualities.
      (An exposition on the structure and functioning of the nerves and the brain: hollow tubes with fibers running up their center, surrounded by the fine gas of the so-called animal spirits. The nerve fibers bring information from the periphery to the brain, the animal spirits take signals from the brain back to the periphery.)
      The physiology of sensation is a story that begins with some distal object and ends with the motion of single nerve-fibers and the corresponding production of points of contact on the pineal gland between the physical/physiological and mental worlds. Individual nerves are each dedicated to producing a kind of sensation--smells or tastes or colors--and variations in the motion produced in that nerve-fiber correspond to variations within that sensation type--red or white or blue. The physiology behind the sensory ideas--not sensations--of primary qualities involves complicated spatial configurations that include combinations of the single stimulated nerves that are responsible for sensations of secondary qualities. So, in the ordinary case of vision, the pattern of retinal stimulation will be reproduced by patterns of stimulation at the pineal gland in the brain, a cerebral image of sorts. But there's more to the story. Nerves will also communicate the position of the eye within its boney orbit, the shape of the eye, and other non-retinal factors. These will have their effects on the pineal gland as well. Altogether this complicated configuration of neural effects will make possible the seeing of shape, distance, size, etc. The crucial point is that the production of sensations is explained in terms of physio-psychological single points of contact, whereas the production of the sensory ideas of primary qualities requires complicated spatial configurations. In Dioptrics, just before taking up the perception of distance, a primary quality, he finishes his discussion of the sensations of color and light, secondary qualities, by observing that our color discriminations are limited because "the area occupied by each fiber has to be regarded as if it were only a single point" (VI 134, CSM I 168-69). What physiologically has extension becomes in the mind something utterly simple and conceptually dimensionless. This is the very nature of sensations: they are representationally atomic.
      In contrast, the complexity of the neural background in the production of perceptions of the primary qualities is reflected in the complex interconnections among the ideas of the primary qualities. The perceived size of something is in part a function of its perceived distance from the viewer. The perceived shape of something is in part a function of knowledge of the viewer's spatial orientation to the object. The interdependencies are very complex. This is not true of sensations. The perceived redness of something does not depend on its sound or smell or taste.
      This difference between sensations (of secondary qualities) and sensory ideas of primary qualities informs Descartes's description in the Sixth Replies of the three grades of sense perception (three grades of sentiendi, sensing). The sight of a stick is his example. The first grade includes movements in the optic nerve and the brain. The second grade is a matter of what's in the mind. It "extends to the mere perception of the color and light reflected from the stick." Sensations. The third grade gives us "a rational calculation about the size, shape, and distance of the stick." These are judgments. The absence of primary qualities in the second grade, their relegation to the third grade, is no oversight, nor is it a matter of emphasis as a result of argumentative context. There are no sensations of primary qualities.
      (My "sensation" translates one of Descartes's uses of sensus. His terminology alone justifies saying that there are no sensations of primary qualities. This emerges from a careful study of his uses of two Latin words, sentir and sensus. Sentir (verb): to sense, to perceive by the senses (internal or external). Usual CSM translation: "have a sense perception." This verb takes as its objects bodies, primary qualities (the modes of extension), secondary qualities (smell, taste, color, sound, heat--the list varies somewhat from place to place), pleasure and pain, the appetites (hunger and thirst), and emotions and passions (joy, love, fear, etc.).
      Those who think Descartes accepts sensations of primary qualities--or at least the participation of primary qualities in the second grade--refer to his observation that a "rational calculation about the size, shape and distance" of a stick arises on the basis on a sensation of color and also "on the basis of the extension of the colour and its boundaries together with its position in relation to the parts of the brain" (VII 437, II 295). He seems to be describing a sensation image of a colored expanse--a color-as-extended sensation--which seems to function as a second-grade, pre-judgmental given. Sensus (noun): (1) Sense or the senses--the sense-perceptual faculty/faculties. Usually either the genitive case or the ablative of means. The objects of the senses include everything that Descartes names as the objects of sentir. (2) Sensation. Usually translated "sensation" or "feeling" in CSM. Usually modified by a noun in the genitive case identifying the kind of sensation--as in sensation of pain, sensation of thirst, feeling of heat. The modifying genitive is never a body or a primary quality. Always secondary qualities, pleasure or pain, hunger or thirst, emotions and passions. So, Descartes senses/sees a tower, and he sees it as having a color and a shape. He has a sensation of its color, but he has no sensation of its shape. His terminological usage is very strict on this point. At one point in the Principles Descartes seems to want to restrict sensus as sensation to the secondary qualities alone, rather than extend it to the internal sensations as well. But the work is somewhat inconsistent on this issue. Principles I 48: "we also experience within ourselves certain other things which must not be referred either to the mind alone or to the body alone. These arise, as will be made clear later on, in the appropriate place, from the close and intimate union of our mind with the body. This list includes, first, appetites like hunger and thirst; secondly, the emotions or passions of the mind which do not consist of thought alone, such as the emotions of anger, joy, sadness and love; and finally, all the sensations, such as those of pain, pleasure, light, colours, sounds, smells, tastes, heat, hardness and the other tactile qualities." Principles I 66 talks about "sensations, emotions and appetites," treating them as three different categories. But Principles IV 190 addresses the neural sources of various kinds of sensus that are the result of internal sensing, discussing the appetites, the emotions and the passions. Principles IV 197 considers the source in bodily motions of "the confused thoughts we call sensations or feelings [sensus sive sensations].")
      But we should worry about this interpretation. No mental phenomenon, no thought, a fortiori, no sensation of color, is extended. And Descartes is not talking about some intentional space. The passage unambiguously describes actual spatial relations--"its position in relation to the parts of the brain." What then does he mean by the extension of the color? Color here may be the physical color, i.e. that in the object that produces the sensation of color in us. There is some textual precedence in Descartes's writings for talking this way (e.g. Dioptrics VI 85, I 153 and Principles IV 198). So, in the generation of the third-grade sensory judgment of primary qualities we have a weird hybrid antecedent, a mix of the first-grade spatial configuration--distal and/or proximal--and second-grade sensation. They jointly function as the occasion for the third-grade judgment.
      So, psycho-physiologically, the causal background to sensation of secondary qualities is an isolated and, as it were, atomistic event, whereas the sensory ideas of primary qualities are occasioned by complex configurations of modes of extension. This difference, I now argue, is then reflected in a blend of cognitive and metaphysical considerations that ground the distinction between primary qualities and secondary qualities.
      The primary qualities are affiliated with one another in a way that the secondary qualities are not. Actual shape, size, distance and motion as modes of a single essence--the principal attribute--are interrelated in a systematic fashion. This interrelation is expressed by the facts of projective geometry that underlie the production of the first-grade configuration. Within the intellect these affiliations make possible the intelligibility of the ideas of primary qualities, which allows us to engage in geometrical proofs and calculations and to understand the geometry that underlies the physiology of perception.
      As bits of formal reality, sensations are just as real as modes of extension: sensations are formally modes of thought. But looking at their content, the ideas of secondary qualities, we find severe limits to their intelligibility. While the first-grade motions of matter that produce the sensations are affiliated with one another within the lawful system that is the realm of extension, the secondary qualities themselves have no such systematic relations. Of color, taste, smell, sound, none is understandable in virtue of any combination of the others. This unaffiliated, isolated character makes secondary qualities deeply unintelligible. They are the brute and, as it were, atomistic mental effects of certain motions, and there is little more to know about them. (It is not just this results in obscurity and confusion. To lack affiliation within Descartes's metaphysical grammar of substance and mode is just to be obscure and confused. This is what makes them so uncertain, and this is why ideas of the secondary qualities are materially false and why secondary qualities are in some sense unreal.)
      Sensations of secondary qualities occur at a point of psychic contact with the external world--a single nerve-fiber with its determinate motion affecting a spot on the pineal gland. In contrast, sensory ideas of primary qualities are occasioned by images spread across the pineal gland that contribute to a complex spatial configurations. This profound psycho-physiological difference grounds a distinction between sensations of secondary qualities and the sensory ideas of primary qualities with implications throughout Descartes's epistemology and metaphysics.

Dan Forbes, University of Georgia
"The Missing Definition of Infinite in Spinoza's Ethics

      Spinoza's so-called "Letter on the Infinite" (Letter 12) delineates three different ways in which a thing can be considered infinite; he contends that his classification resolves "the problem of the Infinite." However, in Ethics IP16 Spinoza argumentatively links substance and modes in terms of infinity, even though their manifestations of infinity are different in kind: the infinity of substance is indivisible and unique, but somehow entails a divisible, plural infinity of modes in virtue of the fact that substance consists of an infinite plurality of attributes. It is hardly clear how substance can be indivisibly infinite and yet consist of an infinite plurality of attributes--a sort of infinity that seems inherently divided. Hence a coherent account of Spinoza's conception of infinity is key to making sense of his metaphysical system.
      As Martial Gueroult argues, Letter 12 offers no metaphysical account of the infinite, but seeks only to dispel misconceptions concerning it. Because Spinoza makes much use of the concept of infinity in the Ethics, a metaphysical account must appear there, one which presumably systematizes the three kinds of infinity delineated in Letter 12. In this paper I evaluate the interpretive approach of seeking some form of definition of infinity' in the Ethics. While Spinoza offers a formal definition of finite in its own kind' (in suo genere finita) (ID2), he does not provide such a definition of infinite'. Instead, in the sequence of propositions IP2-6 Spinoza deduces properties which must be denied of substance before deducing that substance must be infinite (IP8), which seems to suggest that we understand the nature of infinity negatively. However, Spinoza then presents what appears to be a definition of infinite' in the form of a gloss in the first Scholium to IP8: "being infinite is an absolute affirmation [absoluta affirmation] of the existence of some nature." I argue that despite this tension between the affirmative nature of infinity and the negative character of the early propositions, Spinoza's conception of infinity is accurately described as positive and "affirmative," but that it cannot properly be understood in terms of a definition. The reason why Spinoza does not (and should not) offer a formal definition of infinite' is due in some part to the fact that its nature as absolute affirmation is the very thing that underwrites the possibility of definition as such. In the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect Spinoza discusses what he calls true definitions', definitions which express the essences of things. He contends that what marks a true definition is an affirmative character: a plurality of necessary properties is deducible from a true definition. Since infinity is a property and not a thing we should not expect a true definition' of infinity; moreover, since infinity is "absolute affirmation," all true definitions derive their capacity to entail the necessary properties of the things they define in virtue of their participation in the absolute affirmation of infinity. Hence a unified metaphysical account of infinity explaining the distinctions made in Letter 12 must be distilled from an examination of how the affirmative nature of infinity drives the unfolding of Spinoza's metaphysical system in the geometrical demonstrations of the Ethics.

Laurence Carlin, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh
"Teleology and Phenomenalism in Leibniz and Berkeley"

      For nearly a century now, a number of commentators (including Robert Adams, Brandon Look, Montgomery Furth, Willy Kabitz, and J.J. MacIntosh) have maintained that Leibniz and Berkeley held similar philosophical views. Their views are similar, we are told, because both of them endorsed forms of phenomenalism. This is typically understood (at least in the early modern context) as a metaphysical view about the nature of physical objects, and it is loosely characterized by such phrases as "the physical depends on the mental," or "bodies are reducible to sets of perceptions," or, of course, Berkeley's favorite, esse est percipi.
      This assessment of Leibniz and Berkeley as phenomenalist companions is often seen as gaining support from Leibniz's own assessment of his relationship to Berkeley. Commentators have pointed out that Leibniz, in his notes on Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge, saw Berkeley as holding much "that is correct and close to his own view." Indeed, most of Leibniz's complaints about Berkeley's Principles, it would appear, have to do with the way that Berkeley "paradoxically expresses" the relevant views. But a number of Leibniz's comments on Berkeley indicate that there are disagreements that are not simply over matters of presentation. As this paper will show, Leibniz's claim that Berkeley is wrong (1) to "restrict ideas to imaginations," and--"worst" of all--(2) to reject the infinite divisibility of the extended, reflect deep and important disagreements between the two philosophers' teleological conceptions of nature. In light of this, there might be reason to question not only commentators' assimilation of the views of Berkeley and Leibniz, but even Leibniz's own assessment of the closeness of their views.
      More specifically, the purpose of this paper is two-fold: First, after a brief exposition (in section II) of their respective positions, I argue (in section III) that commentators have not isolated the central philosophical claims that make both Leibniz and Berkeley "phenomenalists," and I suggest two theses that serve as the only plausible candidates for common ground between them. Second, I argue (in sections IV-V) that the relevant common ground is interpreted so differently by Leibniz and by Berkeley that it forces a difference in important teleological views, and this suggests that it is a mistake, pace recent commentary, to assimilate their ontological views in the first place. What Leibniz and Berkeley do have in common, I shall show, is that both of them believed, unlike most of their contemporaries, in the intelligibility and usefulness of final causes. But the differences in their views about the nature of physical objects led them in radically different directions with respect to an account of final causes, and this is a point that seems to have gone unnoticed by commentators.

George Pappas, Ohio State University
"Locke's Account of Perception"

      In Locke's own table of contents to what we call Draft B of the Essay, he says, "Those Ideas 1st which first affect the senses and make perception, which is the Mindes takeing notice of Ideas" (Drafts for the Essay, ed. Nidditch & Rogers, 88). If we understand Locke's use of the term "perception" in this passage to mean perception of objects, then he would be asserting that "taking notice of ideas" would just be perception of objects. That would be a striking thought; the perception of an external object would amount to no more than the having of, or taking notice of, some ideas. Nonetheless, we find Locke saying much the same thing in a number of passages in the Essay, published first nearly twenty years later.
      For instance, at Essay II.I.9 he says: "To ask, at what time a man has first any Ideas, is to ask, when he begins to perceive; having Ideas, and Perception, being the same thing." He says something like the same thing in a discussion of pain: "Fire may burn our Bodies, with no other effect, than it does a Billet, unless that motion be continued to the Brain, and there the sence of heat, or Idea of Pain, be produced in the Mind, wherein consists actual Perception" (E, II, IX, 3). Berkeley, too, says much the same thing. For example, at Notebooks entry # 301 he says "Whatsoever has any of our ideas in it must perceive, it being that very having, that passive reception of idea that denominates the mind perceiving. that being the very essence of perception, or that wherein perception consists." He repeats essentially the same point at # 378, entry 10: "the bare passive reception or Having of ideas is call'd perception."
      Of course, this idea cannot be quite true, for either Locke or Berkeley, for the thesis is too general. Berkeley notes this at Notebooks 582: "The having Ideas is not the same with Perception. a man may have Ideas when he only Imagines. But then this Imagination presupposeth Perception." Locke would have to accept this restriction, and another, namely that only the experience of ideas of sensation that are causally connected with objects in just the right ways counts as perception.
      Even so, the passages here cited in support of such a position admit of more than one reading. A weak reading would take Locke to be holding just that (1) Every perceptual event includes the event of experiencing some ideas. A strong reading of these passages asserts some form of identity, perhaps (2) Each event of perception is nothing more than the event of experiencing some ideas. In this paper I argue that a version of the stronger reading is Locke's actual view. This theory I call the constitution theory, because its main thesis is that each event of perception of an object is said to consist in, or be constituted by, an event of experiencing, or taking in notice, some ideas of sensation. One reason for thinking that this is Locke's actual theory this is that the pain passage serves to reinforce the passage from II.IX.9. Another reason is that Locke takes perception to be an event that goes on in many animals, including those far down the biological scale, and for them the having of ideas pretty well exhausts their cognitive repertoire. He says: "Perception, I believe, is, in some degree, in all sorts of Animals; though in some, possibly, the Avenues, provide by Nature for the reception of Sensations are so few, and the Perception, they are received with so obscure and dull, that it comes extremely short of the quickness and variety of Sensations, which is in other Animals" (II, IX, 12; emphases Locke's).
      But if this strong identity or constitution position according to which perception for Locke consists in no more than the having of the right sorts of ideas is correct, then two further consequences for our understanding of Locke emerge. The first is that the event of perceiving an object, for Locke, is not one that includes an element of judging or judgment. The weak reading of the above passages from Locke, suggested above, is certainly compatible with an element of judgment in all perception, but the strong reading, here favored, is not. The strong reading has the result that there is nothing more to perception than the experience of the right sorts of ideas, thereby leaving no room for judgment. Secondly, and closely related to the first point, Locke's theory of perception makes no special role for resemblance, specifically resemblance judgments to the effect that some currently experienced ideas resemble some sensible qualities in bodies. Of course, there may be such resemblances whenever someone perceives an object by sight or touch. But perception of the objection is not wrought by the person making a judgment to the effect that such a resemblance obtains. In this respect, it is therefore a mistake to think of Locke as a representative realist about perception.
      An objection to this "constitution" interpretation of Locke's view of perception is that it seems to commit him as well to a direct realist theory of perception. But it is extremely plausible to think that Locke is an indirect realist about perception, if not a representative one, as scores of commentators from Berkeley onward have said. So the "constitution" interpretation of Locke is suspect.
      The error in this objection, it is argued, is that the "constitution" interpretation is actually compatible with either a direct, or an indirect realist account of perception. Indeed, that the "constitution" account is neutral as between the direct and the indirect realist readings is an added strength of the interpretation overall. Indeed, there are good textual grounds in support of both the indirect and the direct realist readings of Locke. Which of the two is ultimately the correct interpretation of Locke has to be decided on other grounds, as both can readily accommodate the constitution theory.

Uriah Kriegel, University of Arizona
"Locke on Consciousness"

      Locke's theory of consciousness is often appropriated as a forerunner of present-day Higher-Order Perception (HOP) theories, but not much is said about it beyond that. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Locke's account of consciousness that portrays it as crucially different from current-day HOP theory, both in detail and in spirit. In this paper, it is argued that there are good historical and philosophical reasons to attribute to Locke the view not that conscious states are accompanied by higher-order perceptions, but rather than conscious states constitute perceptions of themselves.

William Melanson, Ohio State University
"Disambiguating Locke's 'Relations': Rescuing the Concept of 'Conformity' and Locke's Theory of Sensitive Knowledge"

      The systematic philosophical picture presented in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding seems to require the existence of three different sorts of relations: mental relations (relations between ideas), physical relations (relations between external objects), and mental-physical relations (relations between ideas and external objects). Mental relations are required in order to make sense of, among other things, Locke's theory of mathematics. Physical relations are required in order to make sense of, among other things, the existence of external objects being located in time and space and having causal powers. Mental-physical relations are required in order for there to be sensitive knowledge of external objects.
      The problem is that Locke is often interpreted as allowing only for the existence of mental relations. As evidence for this interpretation, commentators often point to the following passages. (i) This further may be considered concerning Relation, That though it be not contained in the real existence of Things, but something extraneous, and superinduced: yet the Ideas which relative words stand for, are often clearer, and more distinct than those Substances to which they belong. The Notion we have of a Father, or Brother, is a great deal clearer, and more distinct, than that we have of a Man (Essay, II, 25, 8; Nidditch, ed., 322). (ii) Mixed Modes and Relations, having no other reality, but what they have in the Minds of Men... (Essay, II, 30, 4; Nidditch, ed., 373). These passages surely do make it look as though Locke denied the existence of extra-mental relations, both physical and mental-physical. It is quite widely recognized that without physical relations, the Lockean system faces many counter-intuitive consequences, if not outright absurd consequences. What has not been widely recognized is that a lack of mental-physical relations would have even far more disastrous effects on the Lockean system. According to Locke's theory of sensitive knowledge, knowledge of external things requires a relation of conformity between the objects and our ideas of them. Locke writes, (iii) " 'Tis evident, the Mind knows not Things immediately, but only by the intervention of the Ideas it has of them. Our Knowledge therefore is real, only so far as there is a conformity between our Ideas and the reality of Things" (Essay, IV, 4, 3; Nidditch, ed., 563). Without the existence of mental-physical conformity relations, Locke's theory of sensitive knowledge does not even have a chance of getting off the ground.
In my paper, I resolve these apparent problems by disambiguating Locke's use of the term, "relation." There is strong textual evidence that Locke uses the term, "relation," with at least two and probably three different senses. For Locke, what kinds of things (whether mental or physical) can enter into a relation depends on which sense of "relation" one is concerned with. I argue that there is a Lockean sense of "relation" which allows for the existence of extra-mental relations, both physical relations and mental-physical relations. Consequently, Locke has no problem making sense either of external objects having independent relational properties (e.g. existing in space and time) or our having sensitive knowledge of external objects via a conformity relation between those objects and our ideas of them.

Andrew Terjesen, Austin College
"The Moral Psychology of Impartiality: An Examination of the Spectator Theories of David Hume and Adam Smith"

      David Hume and Adam Smith both endorse a theory of moral judgment that holds that moral sentiments are the product of corrected sympathies. In both cases, the correction of sympathy is meant to produce an impartial judgment--and consequently a judgment that reflects, in their minds, the objectivity of morality. Both philosophers also describe the correction of sympathy as involving the perspective of a disinterested spectator. Because of the similarities between these two Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, there is a tendency to lump them together in discussions of Eighteenth Century moral sentimentalism and often only focus on one of the thinkers (usually Hume).
      This paper will show that there are distinct versions of the spectator theory in the two thinkers and that the two versions must be treated separately. The difference in spectator theory is largely due to their different views of sympathy and what sympathy is capable of. Hume does not think it possible for a person to ever truly get outside of him- or herself; at least solely through an exercise of the imagination. Thus, the perspective of multiple, actual spectators is employed to create a more general point of view from which to make moral judgments. Smith, on the other hand, sees the ability to imagine oneself as someone else as the key element in sympathy. Consequently, he employs a single, idealized spectator to filter out any biases in the person sympathizing.
      The paper will also argue that the two spectator theories, although distinct and based on seemingly incompatible notions of sympathy, complement each other. A brief consideration of contemporary social psychology will show that both kinds of sympathy have been observed in humans. Hume and Smith's methods for achieving impartial moral judgments are suited for different judgment situations (based on each one's particular strengths and weaknesses). Hume's method is better adapted for situations where a quick judgment is required, the situation is fairly typical or the culture has very stable mores. Smith's method is better fitted for situations where one can take one's time to render a judgment, the situation is novel or the culture has a constant influx of new mores.
      Of course, both philosophers presumed that the only impediments to impartial judgment were particular interests [such as my personal welfare or the happiness of my friend]. The paper will end with a short consideration of whether either spectator theory has adequate resources to deal with the Twentieth Century critique of impartiality--that it enshrines a particular set of cultural values.