ABSTRACT
Seeing, hearing, smelling-in short, perceiving-something is for Hume ‘a mere passive admission of the impression thro’ the organs of sensation’ (p. 73). But not everything that goes on in the mind, or that is important for human life, is a case of perceiving in this sense. People think about and have beliefs about matters of fact that they are not perceiving at the moment. And it is very important for human life that this is so. If we had no such beliefs, Hume says:
We should never know how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of speculation. (E, p. 45)
Acting often involves deliberation, and that in turn requires beliefs about various means to the ends we seek and the probable results of those possible courses of action. Since the actions have yet to occur, their consequences have not occurred either, and so any beliefs we have about them must be beliefs about something ‘absent’, something that is not present to our minds at the moment. In fact, a little reflection is enough to show that almost all our beliefs are at least partly about what is not currently being observed by us. How do we get them?
