ABSTRACT
David Hume says that neither the senses nor reason can produce belief in the distinct and continued existence of bodies. Though Hume accepts Berkeley’s refutation of “the philosophical system” as unintelligible, and reinforces his arguments in a masterful manner in his section “On the Modern Philosophy”, he rejects Berkeley’s phenomenalist solution of the problem. What Berkeley is trying to do, Hume thinks, is to destroy a natural conviction, because it is not clearly intelligible or demonstrable by reason, and to substitute for it a different conviction which is. Hume concludes “Thus there is a direct and total opposition betwixt reason and senses; or more properly speaking, betwixt the conclusions from cause and effect, and that persuade the continued and independent existence of body". What Hume is drawing attention to is the self-contradictoriness of the position of the simple-minded physiologist who says that his observations by his senses of human sense organs and human reports of sense-experience.
