ABSTRACT
Hume went on to write that ‘no Man, who reflects, ever doubted, that the Existences, which we consider, when we say, this House, and that Tree, are . . . fleeting Copies or Representations of other Existences, which remain uniform and independent.’ But this was not said in his own voice (it is an opinion attributed to reflective people), and was quickly retracted.7 While the argument leads to the conclusion that the things that we see are dependent on us, and that some of them are copies or representations of others, it does not lead to the further conclusion that any of them are copies or representations of independently existing objects. This is a conclusion that Hume immediately went on to declare to be unjustifiable (EHU 10). Though it is drawn by reflective people it turns out to be the effect of a compulsion to attempt to preserve a naturally induced belief in the reality of external objects. Hume considered it to be unjustified by argument, and liable to unanswerable skeptical objections.
