The goal of this thesis is to identify a tension in Hume's philosophy, between
his metaphysics and virtue ethics, to diagnose its roots in his epistemology
and to begin to resolve that tension by appealing to contemporary accounts
of the metaphysics of powers. It will be shown that doing so can result in a
more coherent Humean philosophy, one that does not contradict any of
Hume's key principles.
Hume's epistemology is grounded in his theory of impressions and ideas,
which he contends form the basis of all knowledge (1978, p.4). Every simple
idea we possess must derive from a corresponding simple impression if it is
supposed to represent anything at all. This is Hume's copy principle,
commitment to which is a central factor in any Humean philosophy.
Complex ideas, such as an idea of Europe, can be built from multiple simple
or complex impressions, but must necessarily be grounded in impressions
to have content. A belief, for Hume, is justified to the extent that experience
supports it, while true knowledge is a matter of relations between ideas -
chiefly mathematical truths.
