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2 results

  • Chapter 2 - Methodizing Hume’s Metaphysics

  • Edited by Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, College of William and Mary, Virginia
  • Book:
    Hume's <i>A Treatise of Human Nature</i>
    Published online:
    05 December 2025
    Print publication:
    08 January 2026, pp 29-46

  • Summary

    One of the sciences comprised in Hume’s Science of Human Nature is metaphysics, understood as the science of the most general features of the world as it appears to us. I show how Hume’s metaphysics in the Treatise can be “methodized, or reduced to general principles.” Those principles are: (I) The Contradiction Principle: The distinctly conceivable implies no contradiction. (II) The Possibility Principle: What implies no contradiction is possible. (III) The Conceptual Separability Principle: Things are different if and only if separable in conception. On these principles the rest of Hume’s metaphysics is based, including his atomistic ontology and his denial of necessary connection: only single, individual, simple, unaltering, determinate, particular, metaphysically independent things exist.

Mary Shepherd

Mary Shepherd
  • Antonia LoLordo
  • Published online:
    01 September 2022
    Print publication:
    08 September 2022
  • There has recently been a resurgence of interest in the early nineteenth century Scottish philosopher Mary Shepherd. This Element is intended to provide an overview of Shepherd's system, including her views on the following wide range of topics: causation, induction, knowledge of the external world, matter, life, animal cognition, the relationship between mind and body, the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, miracles, and the nature of divine creation. The author also provides an overview of relevant secondary literature and argues for their own interpretation of Shepherd's metaphysics.