2006 South Central Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy Abstracts

Joseph Cosgrove, Providence College, Providence, RI
"Descartes, Modern Science, and the Self-Effacement of Metaphysics"
      Descartes occupies a curiously ambiguous position in philosophical interpretations the history of science. On the one hand, modern science is commonly regarded as essentially "Cartesian" in its reductive metaphysics and mathematical conception of the corporeal world. While this view is more characteristic of continental philosophical readings (from Gueroult in French scholarship on Descartes, for instance, to Heidegger in phenomenology of science), it is encountered more generally as well. Leading American geneticist Richard Lewontin, for instance, descries the ultimate source of contemporary genetic determinism in Cartesian method (specifically, Descartes' Discourse).
      At the same time, leading scholars on Descartes and the history of science, such as Garber, Guakroger, and Clarke, view Descartes' natural philosophy as a misguided attempt to intrude metaphysics into physics. This interpretation would appear to be buttressed by the significant mistakes in Descartes physics, which latter are presumably responsible for Descartes' relative absence from science textbooks in comparison, for instance, with Galileo and Newton. On such a view, Descartes erred in physics precisely because he tried to found physics upon metaphysics. Daniel Garber, for instance, who indeed titles his influential book on Descartes' science Descartes' Metaphysical Physics, concludes that "as an approach to understanding the natural world Descartes' program turned out to be a dead end," whereas the "more strictly scientific and less metaphysical attitudes of Galileo and Newton" yielded modern science as we know it today.
      These two schools of interpretation seem clearly incompatible. If seventeenth-century science replaces scholastic-Aristotelian natural philosophy and its teleological metaphysics with a new, mechanistic-mathematical understanding of nature, then, it would seem, this mechanistic-mathematical doctrine of nature must itself be regarded as a metaphysical doctrine, in which case Cartesian science can certainly not be faulted for being "metaphysical"; or, if the new mechanistic-mathematical doctrine it regarded as a non-metaphysical doctrine, then Cartesian science is no more metaphysical than Galilean or Newtonian science.
      However, we have reason to doubt that the situation can be adequately characterized in terms of whether or the extent to which modern and/or Cartesian science is or is not "metaphysical." To be sure, modern science does in some way define itself by the "bracketing" of metaphysics, such that concerns integral to the scholastic Aristotelian philosophia naturalis are relegated in the modern period to the domain of "metaphysics of nature," an enterprise carried out independently of science in its proper sense. Yet this very bracketing of metaphysics represents a metaphysical transition whose origin must be sought in philosophy rather than science itself; for the bracketing of metaphysics which underwrites the possibility of modern science can in no wise be an accomplishment of that very metaphysically "reduced" science. Accordingly, in this essay I shall attempt to demonstrate that Descartes' metaphysics is essentially a negative or "self-effacing" metaphysics, and that this very Cartesian metaphysics renders possible the subsequent bracketing of metaphysics in classical (Newtonian) science.

Francesca di Poppa, Texas Tech University
"Spinoza on Substances and Attributes in the Short Treatise"
      This paper solves an interpretative problem in Spinoza's early work, The Short Treatise on God, Man and Well-Being. Scholars such as Gueroult and (most recently) Giuseppa Saccaro Del Buffa have shown that the language of Short Treatise (and, according to Gueroult, of the Ethics as well) treats substances and attributes as identical, as if they were the same thing. According to these interpreters, if substances and attributes are the same thing (i.e. every "attribute" is a substance constituted of a single attribute), and if attributes inhere to, or are predicated of, God, then one must conclude that God is a Being to which an infinite number of these substances-attributes inhere.
      Firstly, I will show that this intepretation is problematic, because it ascribes to Spinoza an incoherent position when we try to "spell out" the relationship between God and these supposed substance-attributes. Of course, the fact that the position is incoherent in itself does not prove that Spinoza did not at some point hold it.
      More importantly, I claim that there is a more plausible reading of Spinoza's terminology. I will show that, when discussing substances and attributes as equivalent, Spinoza's goal is to show the inconsistency of Cartesian dualism, which considers extension and thought separate substances. Spinoza's goal is to show that extension and thought, which the Cartesians call substances, are properly understood only as attributes of the infinite Being. Far from endorsing a "substance-attribute" pluralism, Spinoza can be shown to be fully committed to substance monism from his early Short Treatise on.

Michael J. Futch, University of Tulsa
"Leibniz and the Unity of Time"
      The aim of this paper is to explore Leibniz's views on one facet of the topological structure of time: its unity. Specifically, I address the question of whether Leibniz accepts that there can be different time-streams disconnected from one another, or if he instead maintains that time must be unified. To answer this, I begin by considering some early writings where Leibniz seemingly allows for the possibility of both multiple time streams and branching time. In these texts, Leibniz endorses the thesis that there can be a plurality of worlds or universes each of which is spatially and temporally disconnected from the other. On the basis of the possibility of multiple worlds of this sort, Leibniz additionally concludes that non-unified time is a possible temporal topology, even if one that he is unwilling to claim characterizes the topology of the actual world.
      These texts notwithstanding, however, I attempt to establish that in his more considered views Leibniz seeks to set forth purely conceptual reasons for denying that time is or can be non-unified. For Leibniz, time is of necessity unified, and this necessary unity is to be demonstrated on philosophical grounds. While Leibniz offers myriad lines of reasoning for this conclusion, the particular focus of the paper is on what I take to be his use of verificationist-style arguments to refute the possibility of multiple worlds and, with them, non-unified time. I show that Leibniz contends that the assertion of the existence of another time stream is meaningless in the absence of any possible empirical confirmation of its existence, and that he also holds that such assertions cannot be empirically verified and are therefore meaningless. This he takes as sufficient grounds for barring the possibility of non-unified time. Having exposited Leibniz's views, I briefly examine the way in which they presage those of some of his more recent counterparts in the philosophy of time. Finally, the paper concludes with an evaluation of the extent to which Leibniz's views are consonant with his own underlying principles.

Jill Hernandez, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, TX
"Two Problems Facing Leibniz's Form/Matter Defense of Divine Omnipotence"
      A criticism against any theory of divine omnipotence is that an all-powerful being would be able to prevent, or limit, moral evil in the world. Leibniz's notion of divine omnipotence suffers a further attack, since his distinction between productive and permissive willing seems to result in some divine concurrence of individual moral evil.
      In the Theodicy, Leibniz provides three defenses of divine omnipotence against this objection: the "best of all possible worlds" defense, the "divine duty" defense, and the "form/matter" defense. In each, Leibniz relies upon an Augustinian notion of evil as privation to argue that the possibility of evil must be necessary, although its coming into existence is merely contingent. The immediacy and specificity of God's concurrence applies in order to bring about as much perfection as is possible (I.12). On Leibniz's view, God's concurrence in allowing certain events is not enough to show divine efficacy in causing moral evil, nor to prove that God's potency is limited by an inability to prevent evil.
      In this project, I contend that the third Leibnizian defense of divine omnipotence (namely, that God concurs in the matter of sin, rather than the form of sin) fails on two counts. First, although the adoption of an Augustinian view of evil helps Leibniz's first two defenses of divine omnipotence succeed (since it shows that created limits are imperfections but not imperfections that necessarily lead to moral evil), understanding evil as a privation does not suffice to alleviate worries about the inability of God to prevent some moral evil. (Even more, Leibniz's use of evil as a privation suggests some divine causality of human evil, since if God causes x which causes y, this involves God in concurring in y's production just as much, and just as directly, as God concurs in the production of x.)
      Second, the dual nature of God's omnipotence (i.e., omnipotence of existence, or "essence," and action, or "will") creates a paradox when juxtaposed against the form/matter defense. Created things are not necessary, since they do not come from God's essence, but are instead contingent on God's will (I.9). Human actions, then, are not necessary (since they do not come from God's essence). The implication seems to be that human actions are contingent on God's will--which demonstrates the paradox: If God concurs only in the possibility for the existence of evil (which is necessary) but not in individual instances of evil (which are not necessary), and if instances of human evil are contingent on God's will (which is not necessary), then it does indeed seem that human evil depends upon divine concurrence, not just for its possibility (which is necessary) but for its instance (which is contingent). God concurs in the form as well as the matter of evil.
      Even though the form/matter defense itself does not salvage divine omnipotence for Leibniz, I will conclude that Leibniz could recast his defense. Rather than relying upon an Augustinian privation or a distinction between the permissive and productive will, a distinction can be employed that is prevalent in other medieval and early modern theologians, that of potenta absoluta and potenta ordinata. If the moral order of the universe is not grounded in what is essential (necessary) but in what is intended (contingent on God's will), then human evil relates to what God has in fact instantiated, and so does not impinge on divine ability absolutely. This distinction can better support Leibniz's suggestion that evil must be necessarily founded, though contingently existent, and better rebuffs the notion of divine concurrence of individual human evil action.

Han-Kyul Kim, Yale University
"Nominal Symmetry: Locke on Mind and Body"
      This paper explores Locke's theory of mind and body. There has been widespread disagreement among Locke scholars about this subject, and indeed about precisely what kind of philosopher Locke was: he is sometimes taken to be a substance dualist, and sometimes a materialist. No explanation has yet been offered to account for these conflicting interpretations. I shall argue that the reason there have been so many conflicting interpretations can be explained by commentators' failure to appreciate the full extent of an important philosophical thesis of the Essay; namely, the distinction between nominal and real essence. Locke applies this distinction not only to natural kinds but also to the broader categories of materiality and mentality. This paper offers a solution to the interpretive puzzle, and attributes a view to Locke that I shall describe as Nominal Symmetry, whilst outlining its relevance to more recent philosophical debate.
      This paper begins by examining some passages from William Carroll's Dissertation (1707), a neglected eighteenth-century criticism of the Essay. Carroll's main criticism of the Essay was the ambiguity of Locke's terms and arguments. He argued that behind this ambiguity lie significant philosophical issues. According to Carroll, Locke established "Spinoza's Hypothesis" in the Essay--namely an ontological monism, where "Spirit and Matter Co-exist in One and the same Substance," and the mental and physical are "two Nominal and not two Real Substances." Given that many recent commentators have failed to understand Locke's nominality/reality distinction regarding the universal categories of mentality and materiality, Carroll's Dissertation is a significant work in this interpretative context.
      In Locke's Essay, mind and body are contrasted in terms of ideas of substance, not in terms of substances themselves. Richard Aaron confused this nominal dichotomy with a real distinction. Aaron's view that Locke was a substance dualist resulted from insufficient attention to Locke's consistent application of the nominality/reality distinction and its application to mentality and materiality. The same negligence resulted in quite different interpretations from Cartesians, who criticized Locke's proposal about thinking matter as a commitment to atheistic materialism. Locke's thesis about thinking matter is couched in terms that are perfectly consistent with his nominal dualism.
      Locke's nominal dualism does not lead to substance dualism or materialism. It is an ontological monism, but not thereby materialism, to which his nominal dualism is wedded. I argue that Locke's nominal dualism is a symmetrical thesis: the idea of mind and the idea of body (our mental and physical descriptions of the world) "give us an equal view of both parts of nature, the Corporeal and Spiritual," neither type of nominality being more fundamental or privileged than the other. The "ideas" we have about the mind and the body involve our ordinary concepts and the scientific characteristics we attribute to mind and body. The "Substance" unknown to us is the thing that plays the roles specified in our conceptual scheme, or in our scientific theories. The way we identify something as a kind is by confirming if it satisfies its specific roles or not.
      I argue that on Locke's view, materiality (and mentality) consists of all the functional characteristics a particular meets in order for it to be identified as material (and mental) in kind. Locke's agnosticism is directed at the real nature of the fundamental particulars that consist of the world, and which play these functional or causal roles. On this view, materiality and mentality are nominalities, and are not identified with reality. In the sense that everything can be physically described or characterized, it could be argued that Locke was a materialist. But this is only trivially true, as Locke's agnosticism does not commit him to the view that everything is physically constituted.
      I characterize Locke's mind-body theory as Nominal Symmetry as distinct from Cartesian dualism and materialism. It does not a priori fix the nature of the world. The nominal classification of the world as material and mental is what we have acquired from experience and may be subject to revision (or we may no longer use these concepts in the future). This characterisation reflects the critical spirit of the Essay, far more critical and metaphysical than some have assumed.

Walter Ott, Virginia Tech University
"What Kind of Mechanist Was Locke?"
      Does Locke believe that the laws of nature are fixed by the mechanical properties of bodies? Or does he hold instead a version of Cartesian voluntarism, according to which these laws are arbitrarily imposed by God? In this paper, I reconstruct Locke's ontology of relations and powers, arguing that Locke's radical and reductive account of these entities provides the most important clue to his real position.
      I begin by distinguishing two things one might mean by "mechanism":

      Descartes and Malebranche, for example, hold OM, and, partly on that basis, deny CON. This is because they cannot find room among the properties of matter for the Scholastic notion of power. As they see it, powers are occult qualities that cannot be reduced to size, shape, or movement. Thus, on their view, the course of events is directly determined at least in part by God's will. By contrast, Locke wants to preserve CON and the in principle predictability of the natural world based on an idealized knowledge of the properties of bodies alone.
      Boyle showed Locke how to resuscitate the notion of power. First, Boyle offers a reductive view of relations that makes them ontologically innocuous. A commitment to the reality of relations requires nothing over and above a commitment to the reality of the relata. Next, Boyle, in his famous lock and key passage, subsumes powers under the category of relations. To talk of a key's power to open a lock is only to speak of the intrinsic mechanical properties of both the key and the lock. In this way, I argue, the features of Aristotelian powers that so bothered Descartes and Malebranche--their irreducibility, their relations to non-actual possibilia, and so on--are purged.
      Locke is more clear about all of this. I shall argue that, like Boyle, Locke treats power as a species of relation and holds that relations supervene on their relata. I defend this view from a series of objections lodged by Edwin Curley, Rae Langton, and others. I also show how my view allows us to understand some of Locke's otherwise puzzling pronouncements about secondary qualities.
      Unlike Boyle, however, Locke does not endorse Cartesian voluntarism. For in some passages, despite (and, I argue, in direct conflict with) his reductive view of powers, Boyle denies CON, holding that God arbitrarily fixes the laws of the communication of motion. Locke avoids this move and consistently affirms CON. I argue that the passages that seem to tell against my reading of Locke in fact threaten not CON but OM: Locke is a skeptical ontological mechanist, but a devout course of nature mechanist. I close by arguing against competing views, particularly that of Edwin McCann.

Annemarie Peil, Iowa State University
"On Hume's Supposed Rejection of Resemblance Between Objects and Impressions"
      Two questions arise in connection with Hume's treatment of belief in the external world: how do we know that bodies exist, and what can we know about them? The first question has received careful attention in Hume scholarship, but I think the second question has not been as diligently addressed. In this paper, I examine Hume's discussions of the philosophical position that perceiver-independent objects resemble impressions. Most scholars have thought that Hume denied either the possibility that objects resemble impressions or at least that we could ever know that objects resemble impressions. I argue that Hume's treatment was of a much more limited scope than Hume scholars have previously thought. Further, I claim that there is a kind of resemblance that could obtain between objects and impressions that would be impervious to Hume's objections.
      I have organized this paper into two parts. The first is a careful analysis of the relevant parts of Treatise 1.4.2 and 1.4.4. The second is a speculative discussion of how Hume's comments may not be as devastating as commentators usually suppose. I suggest that Hume himself may have been able to endorse the view that objects resemble impressions.
      In the analytic part of the paper, I first trace how Hume came to discuss whether objects resemble impressions. In Treatise 1.4.2, Hume identified a group he called "modern philosophers," who endorsed a theory of "double existence." On this view, there exist perceiver-independent objects over and above perceiver-dependent perceptions. In addition to this ontological distinction, the theory of double existence has two important components. First there is what I call the "Derivation Thesis": impressions are caused by the perceiver's bodily interaction with objects. Second, there is what I call the "Resemblance Thesis": impressions resemble their ancestral objects.
      In Treatise 1.4.2 Hume presented arguments that seem to challenge the Derivation Thesis. According to modern philosophers, objects are in principle never directly observable; in perceptual experience we are acquainted only with our own impressions. But, Hume pointed out, causal inference is grounded in experienced constant conjunction. Since objects are never available to us in immediate experience, it is questionable how one could ever experience the constant conjunction of objects and impressions so as to conclude that impressions are caused by objects. There has been considerable work in the secondary literature that challenges whether Hume's arguments succeed at undermining the Derivation Thesis. Many scholars take seriously Hume's claim that we cannot question whether bodies exist. Accordingly, there has been much work that strives to show how Hume could believe in the existence of objects, given that he seems to doubt seriously any putative justification for that view.
      My focus in this paper is examining Hume's treatment of the Resemblance Thesis. Scattered throughout Treatise 1.4.2 are considerations that seem to undercut the claim that objects and impressions resemble. Furthermore, in Treatise 1.4.4, Hume discussed the argument for the so-called primary-secondary qualities distinction. The argument concludes that objects do not have secondary qualities that resemble our impressions. Hume pointed out that the argument cuts against the so-called primary qualities as well. Several interpreters have concluded from this that if Hume believed that objects exist, he could not hold that they in any way resemble objects.
      I argue that Hume's arguments do not show that there is no resemblance whatsoever between objects and impressions. Instead, I argue, Hume targeted the particular view about resemblance that he took to be endorsed by modern philosophers. To substantiate this point, I distinguish between two kinds of resemblance. The first, which I call "specific resemblance," obtains just in case both relata are the same determinate. For example, if my scarlet impression is the same determinate shade as the color of the flower, then my impression specifically resembles the quality of the flower. The second, which I call "general resemblance," obtains just in case the impression and the quality of the object are determinates of the same determinable. For example, if my scarlet impression falls under the determinable color and the flower has a determinate color, then my impression generally resembles the quality of the object.
      With this distinction, I argue that Hume's arguments are aimed against specific resemblance between impressions and objects. This is particularly clear in his treatment of the argument for the primary-secondary qualities distinction in Treatise 1.4.4. The argument, as he presented it, proceeds as a reductio ad absurdum. Suppose that objects have secondary qualities that resemble impressions. Then there are two possibilities, each of which is rejected. The first is that there is a one-to-one correlation between impressions that we perceive and qualities of the object that cause them. However this is absurd, because it would then follow, from the phenomenon of perceptual relativity, that an object could simultaneously possess contrary qualities. The other alternative is that there is a many-to-one correlation between impressions we perceive and the qualities of the object that cause them; that is, a determinate quality of an object resembles the diverse impressions it causes. But, the argument continues, this cannot be: "the same quality cannot resemble impressions entirely different" (THN 1.4.4.4). Therefore objects do not have secondary qualities that resemble our impressions.
      The elimination of the second case depends upon the supposition that resemblance is to be construed as specific resemblance. Suppose that the flower is colored. Its quality, therefore, is a determinate color. But that determinate color cannot be the same determinate shade as the scarlet that I perceive in broad daylight and the deep burgundy that I perceive at midnight. If "resemblance" is understood not as specific resemblance but general resemblance, then the same determinate quality that the flower possesses could resemble the different determinate impressions that it causes, in that they all fall under the same determinable, say red or color.
      Generally speaking, this distinction has been overlooked in Hume scholarship. The argument of Treatise 1.4.4 shows that secondary qualities cannot exist in objects, and Hume added that, on that same argument, primary qualities cannot exist in objects either. So some Hume scholars have concluded that Hume denied that objects have any qualities resembling our impressions. However, I claim that the argument is successful only on the assumption that resemblance must be specific resemblance. If, instead, general resemblance is the relation that obtains between objects and impressions, the modern philosophical argument about secondary qualities does not succeed, and, a fortiori, it does not follow that primary qualities cannot exist in objects. Still, regardless of how the resemblance relation is construed, Hume's point about the inseparability of secondary qualities from primary qualities seems to stand. So if objects are to have qualities that resemble our impressions, they would have to have both primary and secondary qualities.
      Could Hume have endorsed the view that objects, in some sense, resemble impressions? This leads to the speculative part of the paper. In Treatise 1.4.2, Hume pointed out that the adoption of the Resemblance Thesis depends "in a very conspicuous manner" on the imagination (THN 1.4.2.54). As Hume argued with respect to the Derivation Thesis, "the relation of cause and effect can never afford us any just conclusion from the existence or qualities of our perceptions to the existence of external continu'd objects" (THN 1.4.2.54). He then added that even if we could infer that there are objects, we would have no reason to conclude that objects resemble our impressions. "That opinion, therefore, is derived from nothing but the quality of the fancy above-explain'd, that it borrows all its ideas from some precedent perceptions" (THN 1.4.2.54). He continued: "As we suppose our objects in general to resemble our perceptions, so we take it for granted, that every particular object resembles that perception, which it causes" (THN 1.4.2.55). He accounted for this conclusion by the imaginative propensity to "compleat the union." That is, whenever ideas become closely associated together, we have a propensity to add more relations to it than we observe. (Hume referred to his later discussion of how we come to believe that non-spatial impressions, such as flavor, are co-located with other impressions.) Thus when we conclude that objects are causally related to impressions, we add the relation of resemblance.
      At first blush, this account makes it seem as though both the Derivation Thesis and the Resemblance Thesis are epistemically illegitimate. However, in contemporary scholarship on Hume's treatment of what I have called the Derivation Thesis, commentators point out that although Hume held that it depends on the imagination, that does not imply that it is false. A theme of Hume's positive philosophy is that the imagination, not reason, plays a leading role in the development of our fundamental beliefs. Thus, philosophers are not able to develop and sustain views that diverge dramatically from that to which the imagination natively inclines us; nevertheless true philosophy does correct the egregious errors of our unreflective beliefs. Similarly, although the Resemblance Thesis depends upon the imagination in a very strong way, it does not follow that it is false. And it is subject to emendation by philosophical reflection. That is, the imagination inclines us to adopt the Specific Resemblance Thesis. However we discover that it is untenable in the face of perceptually relative phenomena, because it would imply that objects simultaneously possess contrary qualities. Nevertheless the propensity to believe that objects resemble impressions is strong. Philosophical reflection comes to the rescue by introducing a distinction that at the same time satisfies the demands of the imagination (that objects resemble impressions) and is consistent with the phenomenon of perceptual relativity. That is, by changing the relation to general resemblance, we can still believe that objects resemble impressions without absurd implications. Accordingly, it seems that it is open to Hume, if he believed in the existence of objects, to believe in the general resemblance between objects and impressions.

Remy Debes, University of Memphis
"Humanity, Sympathy, and the Puzzle of Hume's Second Enquiry"
      Here is a well-known and curious puzzle of Hume's second Enquiry: After going to great lengths to develop his associationist account of sympathy in Book II of the Treatise, and then using this account to argue for extensive sympathy as the source of our moral sentiments in Book III of the same work, Hume not only seems to replace extensive sympathy with the principle of humanity as the source of our moral sentiments in the second Enquiry, but he appears to drop the Treatise account of sympathy altogether. This particular puzzle of the second Enquiry was discussed at least as early as 1893, when Selby-Bigge made note of it in his introduction to the Enquiries, and more recently in Kate Abramson's "Sympathy and the Project of Hume's Second Inquiry" and Rico Vitz's "Sympathy and Benevolence in Hume's Moral Psychology."
      Almost of equal interest is the variety of proposed solutions to this puzzle. Some simply do not address it or have ignored it by virtue of ignoring the Enquiries altogether. Others, like Selby-Bigge, have thought that Hume merely decided to abandon the associationist account of sympathy and consequently replaced it with a different principle. Similarly, John Rawls suggests that Hume might have realized that he had made too much of the associationist mechanism and that such an account of sympathy yielded only "imparted feeling," a result that did not satisfy Hume's philosophical needs, for it could not by itself explain the "peculiar" moral sentiment that Hume thought underwrote the possibility of general moral agreement. More moderately, Norman Kemp Smith argues that there was a general cooling of Hume's interest in associationism, which explains the change of doctrine between the two works. And in contrast to all these, Abramson has recently argued that Hume did not change his doctrine at all. Rather, the "principle of humanity" is shorthand for "extensive sympathy" and performs all the theoretical work in the second Enquiry that extensive sympathy did in the Treatise. On her account, Hume retained the associationist account of sympathy in the Enquiry, but left out the overt technical discussion of the Treatise in order to fulfill particular rhetorical goals that he thought this technical discussion of sympathy might jeopardize.
      All of these critical commentaries, however, share one important feature: They are each asking, "What happened to sympathy?" In contrast, I suggest that we would be well served by working in the opposite direction and asking, "What is humanity?" Once we understand what humanity is for Hume, and the role it is supposed to play in our moral judgments, we can make better sense of the seeming change of positions from the Treatise to the second Enquiry. Indeed, investigating Hume's notion of humanity will, I think, reveal the initial puzzle itself to be somewhat misconstrued. For, the assumption that humanity has replaced sympathy as the source of our moral sentiments results from a critical misunderstanding of the relationship between Hume's notions of humanity and sympathy. Humanity is fundamentally dependent on sympathy, thereby implicating the latter at the deepest level of Hume's sentimentalist ethics as presented in the second Enquiry. In short, fully rendering Hume's notion of humanity yields strong evidence for thinking that no real inconsistency exists between his position in the Enquiry and the Treatise regarding sympathy and the source of our moral sentiments.
      This conclusion thus partially aligns me with Abramson and Vitz. However, although Abramson, Vitz, and I agree on the essential point of consistency between Hume's Treatise and second Enquiry, I have some important philosophical differences from both. In particular, as will be seen, I do not think we can understand the principle of humanity as mere shorthand for extensive sympathy, as Abramson claims. Such a reading would oversimplify both Hume's account of humanity and its connections to sympathy. And while my arguments overlap more closely with Vitz's, we differ considerably and importantly in method and emphasis. Although Vitz also wants to bring some attention to Hume's concept of humanity, humanity remains a secondary focus for Vitz, leaving many details of Hume's account in need of investigation. Or so I shall argue in this paper.

Giovanni Grandi, Auburn University
"Color and Visible Figure: Dugald Stewart's Criticism of Reid"

      There are two idiosyncrasies in Reid's discussion of color in the Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764). Firstly, Reid claimed that we always ascribe the name "color" and other color terms ("red, " "yellow," etc.) to the unknown quality in the external object we perceive rather than to the color sensation of which we are conscious. This is a particularly surprising claim, since, in Reid's account, what we know of colors at first is simply that they are hidden qualities in the objects that give rise to certain sensations in our mind. Reid thinks that these qualities, being external to the mind, cannot possibly resemble the sensations that they occasion. However, it is not entirely clear why he should limit the reference of color terms to the external qualities of objects. In his account of other senses, he did not seem to be bothered by our use of the same terms to refer both to sensations and to qualities in the external world.
      Secondly, Reid claimed that there is no sensation that is "appropriate" to visible figure. Although sensations of color are usually presented along with the perception of a visible figure, there is no connection between the two arising from the nature of things. We could have the sensation of color without the perception of visible figure, as is actually the case for people affected by severe cataracts. Reid also claimed that we could have had the perception of visible figure without the sensation of color, if God had so decided. The sensation of color only suggests the quality of color. Visible figure is suggested directly by the impression upon the retina.
      Reid explicitly singles out the case of visible figure as an exception to his standard account of the relation among various events in the process of perception. According to this account, each particular sensation regularly precedes a particular act of perception that is distinct from the sensation itself. Although the sensation does not resemble the quality we get to know through this act of direct perception, the sensation never fails to occur before the perception of that particular quality. In this limited sense, the sensation may be said to be "appropriate" to that quality. However, in the case of sight, no particular sensation regularly precedes our perception of visible figure.
      These peculiarities in Reid's account of color and visible figure did not escape the notice of Reid's student, Dugald Stewart. I will review Stewart's criticism of Reid on color and visible figure in the Elements of the Philosophy of Mind (1792), in his Dissertation on the history of modern philosophy, and in a letter to Reid, published by W. Hamilton in his edition of Stewart's works (but not available in the recently published volume of Reid's correspondence).
      Firstly, Stewart noticed the Reid seems to have contradicted himself on the reference of color terms. Indeed, while Reid affirmed that we use color terms to refer to a quality in the object, he also admitted that the sensation and the quality of color are so united in the imagination that they are mistaken for one simple object of thought. On this second hypothesis, we normally ascribe the name "color" to this compound notion whenever we speak and think of colors.
       Secondly, Stewart showed that the variety of color sensations is a necessary means to perceive visible figure. The connection between color and visible figure in perception arises from a connection based on the nature of things, contrary to what Reid asserted.
      My discussion of Stewart will show how Reid's understanding of the relation between color sensations and the perception visible figure reveals a fundamental tension in Reid's theory of perception. In particular, two central tenets of Reid seem to be incompatible: the thesis that there is a regular succession between sensations and perceptions and Reid's claim that sensations do not resemble external qualities.