Hume on Fiction: Space, Time, Number, and the Mind

Hume claims that imaginative 'fiction,' or 'feigning,' is a pervasive feature of our mental lives: many of our 'abstract ideas' (that is, concepts) are products of fiction---including concepts concerning space, time and number that are central to both ordinary and philosophical thought about the world. This striking claim has routinely been neglected by commentators. I put forward a new account of its meaning and philosophical significance. Contrary to what is often supposed, Hume does not mean that we really have no such concepts; nor does he mean that these concepts have no true applications. Instead, I argue, he means that these concepts' satisfaction conditions are mind-dependent. Spatial distance, temporal duration, unity (or oneness) and numerical identity are mind-dependent features of the world—features that are fashioned by the imagination.;Chapters 1 through 3 make this interpretive case. In order to do so, they draw on neglected parallels between Hume's views and those of Hobbes and Leibniz. In his De Corpore, Hobbes argued that bodies' spatial locations are 'feigned'—meaning not that attributions of location to bodies are false, but that being located is an imagination-dependent feature of a body. Similarly, in his Correspondence with Arnauld, Leibniz claims that the unity of a mereologically complex object is a 'fiction'—meaning that this feature depends on our imaginations. I show how interpreting Hume's claims about fiction or feigning as expressing a similar view illuminates his difficult discussions of "fictitious" distance and duration, the "fictitious" unity of a complex whole and the "fiction" by which we acquire our idea of numerical identity.;In Chapters 4 through 6, I use this interpretation of some little-discussed aspects of Hume's philosophy to shed new light on three much-discussed ones: Hume's account of the idea of an external body, his notorious "bundle theory" of the mind, and his skepticism.