ABSTRACT
What does David Hume mean when he calls himself a sceptic? In his first and most important work, A Treatise of Human Nature, he says he is a "modest" (T 1.2.5.26n12.2), "moderate" (T 1.4.3.10), or "true" (T 1.4.7.14) sceptic. In this chapter, the author focuses on a paragraph from the Treatise where he describes scepticism as a "malady" that is not susceptible to a "radical cure", but rather a "remedy" of "carelessness and in-attention". The author argues in what follows that he ultimately holds that scepticism arises from a set of legitimate questions philosophy can ask about our fundamental cognitive capacities. Hume does not use the rhetoric of scepticism to present this argument. He simply anatomizes the mind to discover how it works when reasoning causally. Hume moves away from the metaphoric language of malady and radical cure when he says that it is impossible to defend reason or the senses by justifying them "in that manner".
