An Analysis of David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, Part II

Hume's sceptical claim in regard to external objects is that we have no conception of the existence of external objects. Nevertheless, he argues, we do have an inescapable "vulgar" or common belief in the continued existence of objects, and this idea he accounts for. His explanation is lengthy, but involves the following features. Awareness of objects are disjointed and have no unity of themselves. In an effort to organize our acuity, we first naturally assume that there is no distinction between our insights and the objects that are perceived (this is the so-called "vulgar" view of perception). We then conflate all ideas of observation, which put our minds in similar dispositions. That is to say that people connect ideas that share a resemblance and attribute identity to their causes. Consequently, we naturally feign the continued and external existence of the objects or perceptions that produced these ideas. Lastly, we go on to believe in the existence of these objects because of the force of the resemblance between idea. Although this belief is philosophically unjustified, Hume feels he has given an accurate account of how we inevitably arrive at the idea of external existence. In contrast to the previous explanation of this idea, he recommends that we doubt a more sophisticated but erroneous notion of existence - the so-called philosophical view - which distinguishes between insights and external objects that cause perceptions. The psychological motivation for accepting this view is this: our imagination tells us that resembling perceptions have a continued existence, yet our reflection tells us that they are interrupted. Appealing to both forces, we ascribe interruption to acuities and continuance to objects.