ABSTRACT
David Hume describes how the nature of the problem had been hitherto concealed by the defective traditional account of judgement as “the separating or uniting of different ideas”. This chapter suggests that he regarded it as merely one of the many misguided attempts of philosophers to demonstrate matters of fact, the impossibility of which he claims to show in general where he treats of knowledge and probability. It discusses that Hume prefers to leave the ontologists to infer from his words the nature of the special fallacy they have committed, by way of an ironical tribute to the intelligence which he conceives, but does not believe, them to possess. The kind of belief he defines as “vivacity” is the assurance we repose in a factual proposition after considering both it and its contradictory. A belief, he says, is an idea enlivened by association with a present impression, and steadied by the operation of a custom founded on constant conjunction.
