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As thorough a critic as Norman Kemp Smith states in his investigation of the Treatise that "Hume's treatment of... the complex ideas of modes... need not detain us." Whatever is interesting in this brief treatment, Smith suggests, rests on remarkable features of Humean doctrine , elsewhere expounded at length. This is true, I would agree, as a descriptive comment to the following degree. The category of modes is officially regarded by Hume as highly marginal, even dispensible. But it is not in fact the case that, intrasystematically , the work of modes can be duplicated in non-modal materials. In this discussion I will show that Hume mistakes the case, and attempts to diagnose the error's deep sources. To the naked eye, the mistake seems perhaps small and reparable. Placed under the microscope, we find an important philosophical conception is at stake. Our raw material comprises the explanations of modality provided by Locke and Hume. Modes, according to Locke, are complex ideas which, however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as dependences on, or affections of, substances; such are the ideas signified by the words, triangle, grati tude, murder, etc. (2.12.4).
Hume Studies – Hume Society
Published: Jan 26, 1977
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